Poetry Forum

The Triggerfish Critical Review is currently inviting submissions. We probably have a slight bias towards the experimental, but it's by no means exclusive and we are always happy to look at any well-crafted poetry in any style. Current issue: http://triggerfishcriticalreview.com/ Submission guidelin...

Steve thanks for your support from me too. I have to say I'm still bemused by the whole thing and feel like we were either speaking a different language or living on a diff planet hehe. Yeah, I said everything I thought about it all early on, but realised from the replies I was getting that it was ...

I agree with not labouring this one, as it's been a bit disheartening about basic humanity and reason. I just got back from two weeks holiday and read through the seemingly endless emails on the IBPC loop, and I felt like I was tuning in to The Children of The Damned or Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers...

Hi, Ros, tekkin a look... There's a lot of plain old Tell in here. It starts off clearly enough, with straight descriptives, but quickly starts telling us what to think. I agree that that can be a poetic form too, as long as it's very conscious of itself. But things like 'dark consuming corrosion' a...

Hi, Stuart. Don't get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against competitions, but just wanted to make it very clear that that wasn't in any way my motivation for being here. I get enough of my stuff 'out there' anyway.

Best,

AAF.

nightkids on the street
dialling into youtube --
teenage murder porn

future in music:
intelligent machines
sing themselves to sleep

No big deal, David, just thought I would clear that one up. I am enjoying it, yes, thanks. Still reading around and getting to know the place when I have time.

AAF.

Well, just so I can be excluded from any suspicion of coming here for IBPC reasons, I'll declare myself out of all that right now. I don't want to be entered for the IBPC. Please let this be placed as a mark against my name to that effect. That wasn't what I came here for. I came here to experience ...

Running Will shattered
his icy coolpants --
he sang as he laughed

sleep will catch you up
and pull you into lakes --
Zen moons will beam down

Nah, I doubt I'd have pulled it off as well as you have, as it's a newish thing for me. I think overall it's well-handled, and it does all the stuff of poetry and comes up laughing. I thought RPG was to do with warfare, btw, until I read the comments from other people. I had a weird dichotomy going ...

and look there's danger
in those wailing children --
no stopping it now

yeah, les-enfants just a passing reference to les-enfants terrible. Not meant in any real seriousness though. I like the sound of it more than anything! Probably not something to admit to but oh well... Given the many (now spurious and irrelevant, but often done on autopilot) reasons for doing thin...

Thanks, Bernard. That's pretty insightful. Thanks for the Smiths quote too; it's now playing in my head, which is no bad thing. Glad you got the stroke stuff. A few people have thought that was just a silly joke; maybe it is partly, but it was exactly that weird ambiguity of the language that I want...

Fair enough, but if it's kind of based on what you remember of manuals, or maybe you even looked at one when writing it, then it's sort of Flarf anyway. So it wouldn't be a big jump to insert some actual Flarfed material...

Just a thought. Flarfing can be great fun.

AAF.

I don't like the last line at all, and especially not with an exclamation mark, but I liked the rest of it. It's kind of almost Flarf, I guess, without actually being Flarf. My favourite bit was the part about the bear, I think. That surprised me and gave me a larf. I'm wondering if maybe adding som...

I quite like the IBPC. It's a bit of excitement if you're in it, and even if you're not you get the results sent through and you get to read some interesting stuff. Laurie Byro, who Rus Bowden mentioned above, is always a good read. All this sort of stuff kind of helps to position you in respect to ...

Thanks, Ros. interested to read your objections there. I'll have a think about all that.

AAF.

If anyone wants an explanation of it, here's something I wrote about it somewhere else: "The poem is more to do with obsessional mindsets than anything else, and the ways in which some people unconsciously support beliefs and behaviours that completely rearrange them to their own detriment over...

Thanks, Ben. Glad you got something out of it. There's no medical condition here other than whatever condition we have instilled in us from our childhood, and take on ourselves. Just a metaphor.

AAF.

Ray, thanks for the comments. Glad it wasn't too inaccessible. Dave, thanks also. Yes, I figured that that particular strophe and the one about the dunce/magician thing would arouse some spiritual/political/aesthetic objections. I find them slightly irritating myself, but those were the voices, and ...

David, thanks for the read. Answer is... no reason at all. If it doesn't grab you and make you want to know about it, then there's absolutely zero reason why you should chase it. As you say, life is definitely too short.

Thanks again,

AAF.

Sister Sue, tell me baby, what are we gonna do? —Mink Deville time has gone wrong here for no reason it keeps swinging me back .......................... look it's like this like you've had a sort of stroke let me explain that there are flowers where your hands should be but what is this called he ...

I think the thing here is that you need to close the (growing) distance bigtime, and get in closer. Otherwise you're just circling the table... they buried their babies in their small gardens with their dogs planted apple trees to remember them by she's there at the window we see the purple weight u...